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Following the industrial crisis of the 1920s and the Great Depression in the 1930s, consecutive provincial governments in Nova Scotia turned their efforts toward state-led economic development. After the election of Robert Stanfield and the Tories in 1956, a wholesale industrial planning model was unveiled. Indeed, Stanfieldian economic policy in Nova Scotia was predicated upon the belief that direct state-led interventionism was necessary to offset regional inequity. State corporate entities, such as Industrial Estates Limited, and renewed interest in a state-driven industrial relations paradigm were central in the province's efforts to revitalize its flagging economy and offset predicted decline in the Cape Breton coal and steel industries. This article examines the fate of the Clairtone Sound Corporation, one of Nova Scotia's "new industries" that emerged out of these state-led development efforts. A case study of this Stellarton-based firm reveals how structural processes of deindustrialization produced crisis even within sectors that were completely distinct from the province's cornerstone industries of coal and steel. This case includes a reflection on the class composition of the modernist state in Nova Scotia and represents a convergence of the historiographical focus on state-led industrial development in the Maritimes and recent literature found within deindustrialization studies. À la suite de la crise industrielle des années 1920 et de la Grande Dépression des années 1930, les gouvernements provinciaux successifs de la Nouvelle-Écosse ont orienté leurs efforts vers un développement économique dirigé par l›État. Après l›élection de Robert Stanfield et des conservateurs en 1956, un modèle de planification industrielle en gros a été dévoilé. En effet, la politique économique « stanfieldienne » en Nouvelle-Écosse reposait sur la conviction que l›interventionnisme direct dirigé par l›État était nécessaire pour compenser les inégalités régionales. Les sociétés d›État, comme Industrial Estates Limited, et le regain d›intérêt pour un paradigme de relations industrielles dirigé par l›État ont joué un rôle central dans les efforts de la province pour revitaliser son économie chancelante et compenser le déclin prévu des industries du charbon et de l›acier du Cap-Breton. Cet article examine le sort de la Clairtone Sound Corporation, l›une des « nouvelles industries » de la Nouvelle-Écosse qui a émergé de ces efforts de développement menés par l›État. Une étude de cas de cette entreprise basée à Stellarton révèle comment les processus structurels de désindustrialisation ont produit une crise même dans des secteurs complètement distincts des industries phares du charbon et de l›acier de la province. Ce cas comprend une réflexion sur la composition de classe de l›État moderniste en Nouvelle-Écosse et représente une convergence de l›accent historiographique sur le développement industriel dirigé par l›État dans les Maritimes et de la documentation récente trouvée dans les études sur la désindustrialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financialization of the Brazilian economy is often criticized as being responsible of the slowdown of capital accumulation in this country. Indeed, very high interest rates are maintained in order to finance the public debt, and this fosters capitalists to get more Treasury bonds rather than to invest in the productive area. Nevertheless, the evolution of the profit rate in this area also explains the particular relation existing between capitalists, finance and productive investment, as Marx showed it more than a century ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine whether Malaysia is facing negative deindustrialization by examining value-added, trade and productivity trends over the period 1990-2005. The evidence produced in the paper is concrete enough to confirm that Malaysia is facing negative deindustrialization. While it is typical, as part of the process of structural change, to see a rise and fall in the share occupied by manufacturing in the GDP, the evidence shows that Malaysia is indeed facing premature deindustrialization with a trend slowdown in manufacturing value-added, trade performance and productivity since 2000. Not only has the trade performance of manufacturing been falling, manufacturing labour productivity has also slowed down, with the key sectors such as electric-electronics, textiles and transport equipment showing either negative or low productivity growth since 2000. Malaysian industrial policies have been fairly successful in connecting with the global value chains of multinationals and in developing resource-based industries, but have not achieved the same success in stimulating their transformation to high value-added activities. The lack of effective institutional change, partly explained by ethnic policies, is advanced as the prime reason for the setting in of negative deindustrialization in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sections of the post‐industrial working‐class have made a notable return to media and political discourses in the context of the rise of populism across Europe and the United States. These narratives, which exclude women and BAME working‐class people, suggests the (white, male) working‐class are angry and resentful of being left behind by increasingly globalized political economies, nostalgic for the industrial ordering of work, home, and community. It seems that the political and media establishment are, selectively, understanding what has long been realized by researchers of deindustrialization. In the first, this paper surveys and critiques recent discourses on the post‐industrial working‐classes. The paper then traces the development of industrial ruination as an interdisciplinary area of academic focus, highlighting the themes of memory and temporal factors that have come to dominate the literature. The next section reviews contestations surrounding the affordances of landscapes and industrial ruins for the analysis of memory and history. Finally, the paper proposes interrelated ways to advance future study which historical–cultural geographers are well placed to carry forward. Here, I call for greater attention toward the affective and embodied dimensions of classed experience and the intersectionalities of race and gender in working‐class subjectivities. Further, I suggest there is an imperative to a deeper understanding of constitutive "affective" histories to mediate enduring social inequalities and their political and socially divisive mobilizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has three objectives: i) to empirically examine labor market transitions in deindustrializing Asian economies; ii) to study the character of labor market risks and how these risks are shifting by gender, by education level, and by age in the transitional period; and iii) to rethink the commonly accepted assumptions that deindustrialization and globalization are the main causes of new labor market risks and, thus propose the possibility of institutional legacy as an important factor for such risk shifts. This study focuses on the labor market risks in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Three steps are taken in this inquiry. First, this study commences by empirically examining the three labor market changes mentioned above. Second, it challenges the idea of the emergence of 'new risks,' arguing instead for the concept of 'risk shift': the feature of risk shifting to different demographic groups. Lastly, with the empirical evidence already used, this paper discusses whether deindustrialization or globalization is a sufficient cause for risk shifts in deindustrializing Asian economies, proposing that institutional legacy may be an important factor in risk shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study looks at some specific questions involved in the discussion surrounding deindustrialization in Brazil and delves into aspects of the theoretical-historical debate on deindustrialization found in literature on economic development. The first part emphasizes some elements of this debate in specialized literature, discussing theoretical aspects of the Kaldorian formulation and stressing the role of industrial growth and structural changes in the growth of capitalist economies. The second organizes and analyzes some recent performance indicators for the Brazilian industrial sector. Finally, this study offers some brief conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tertiarisation, or perhaps more accurately, the deindustrialisation of the economy has left deep scars on cities. It is evident not only in the industrial wastelands and empty factory buildings, but also in the income and social structures of cities. Industrialisation, collective wage setting, and the welfare state led to a stark reduction in income differences over the course of the 20th century. Conversely, deindustrialisation and the shift to tertiary sectors could result in increasing wage differentiation. Moreover, numerous studies on global cities, the dual city, and divided cities have also identified income polarisation as a central phenomenon in the development of major cities. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we find an increasing polarisation of household income structures since the mid-1990s. In urban agglomerations, this income polarisation is even more pronounced than in the more rural regions. The income polarisation in Germany is likely to have multiple causes, some of which are directly linked to policies such as the deregulation of the labour market. But extensive deindustrialisation is probably also one of the drivers of this process, and it has directly weakened Germany’s middle-income groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En este trabajo se analiza la desindustrialización en El Salvador, un fenómeno que afecta a los países de América Latina desde los años ochenta y tiene repercusiones en términos de estancamiento económico y pérdida de empleos de calidad. En la primera sección se presenta una reseña de la literatura seleccionada sobre este tema. A continuación se examinan las causas de la desindustrialización en El Salvador, en primer lugar la posibilidad de que las remesas ocasionen un fenómeno de enfermedad holandesa. Descartada esta hipótesis, se examinan las repercusiones de las reformas económicas llevadas a cabo en los años noventa y, mediante la estimación de ecuaciones de cointegración, se encuentra evidencia de que la extrema apertura comercial constituye el motivo principal de la contracción de los sectores de bienes transables. El trabajo termina con una serie de recomendaciones y conclusiones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The industrialization of developing countries has fundamentally transformed work, employment, and labor for millions. Despite the industrialization of most of the developing world, we present evidence that Latin America has experienced stagnating industrial employment in the past few decades. Benefiting from recently available data on industrial employment as a percentage of total employment from 1980 through 2006, we analyze fixed-effects models for 20 Latin American countries. Specifically, we examine three theoretical explanations: productivity/comparative advantage, institutionalism, and dependency/world-systems. Our analyses demonstrate that the prevailing productivity/comparative advantage explanation has limited value. By contrast, we find supportive evidence for a combination of institutional and dependency/world-systems variables. In particular, the stagnating industrial employment share in Latin American countries has been driven by the negative effects of (in order of magnitude) the Mercosur trade agreement, mineral and ore exports (as a percentage of total exports), the duration of the current political regime, military spending (as a percentage of GDP), and inward foreign direct investment flows (as a percentage of GDP). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The regions in depression due to deindustrialisation - the old industrial regions - can be defined by common internal characteristics, characterised by brownfields springing into existence, dwindling human potential, labour market depression and secondary migrational push. The primary focus of the article is the rust belts appearing following deindustrialisation, brownfields and their complex revitalization, especially in terms of the labour market. The aim is to prove the correlation between brownfields and the labour market at subregional level in Hungary by analysing two regions characterised by negative deindustrialization, namely Észak-Magyarorszàg and Dél-Dunàntúl. Local Moran's I was used to analyze regional autocorrelation between brownfields and the labour market indicators. Furthermore, subregions smitten by industrial depression are discussed in detail. The study considers the following hypothesis: in Hungary, brownfields came into being following deindustrialisation, especially negative deindustrialisation, which influences the labour market at subregional level. It is also supposed that the failure of development is due to misconceived revitalization. Using my previous results, I set up a new model of revitalization, which, in my opinion, can be facilitated by utilizing a new development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been considerable concern in Latin America over the implications of increased competition from China for local industry. These concerns include the possibility of “deindustrialization,” the increased “primarization” of the region's exports and the difficulties of upgrading manufactured exports into higher technology products. This article examines the impact of Chinese competition both in the domestic market and in export markets on Brazilian industry. It documents the increased penetration of Chinese manufactures in the Brazilian market and the way in which Brazilian exports have lost market share to China in the US, European Union and four Latin American countries. Brazil, because of its more developed and locally integrated industrial sector, is not typical of other Latin American countries and the article also discusses the relevance of the Brazilian experience for the region as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a report from a June 27-29, 2013 conference in Munich, Germany on the economic history of the late 20th century. Topics of presentations given included the economic consequences of deindustrialization and computerization in industry, the employment patterns of women since the 1970s, and social aspects of unemployment.

Examines the deindustrialization of Singapore, or the structural shift from the manufacturing sector toward the service sector. Statistics highlighting the movement of Singapore's economy towards the service industry; Role of the state in the economic restructuring; Regional security issues in Asia which affect the success of Singapore's deindustrialization.

The article offers the author's insights regarding the geography of micropolitan town Bluefield in West Virginia. Topics discussed include the benefits of coal and railways in the economy of the town, the effects of removing industrial activities in southern West Virginia, and the potential land conversion of Bluefield into a rural region.

In this article I address one of the key aspects of feminist arguments about the economy-that is claims about domestic and caring labor and its necessity for capitalism. I address who undertakes caring labor, in what social relations, and in which spaces in Western economies, where deindustrialization and the rise of service-dominated employment have been associated with a transformation in the nature of work and the composition of the workforce. I review the ways in which this contemporary economic and employment change has been theorized by economic sociologists and economic geographers, in particular by labor geographers-that part of the discipline to which I feel the greatest connection-suggesting that changes in what is often termed reproductive labor have been relatively neglected at the expense of a focus on immaterial, high-status employment in knowledge-based economies. Through a historical example, I then illustrate the production of difference between women workers in caring jobs in the United Kingdom, arguing that closer attention to the intersection of embodied social attributes adds to explanations of continuity and change in the labor market as well as revealing a legacy of discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the late nineteenth century, the school of “Indian Political Economy” was founded to understand India's extreme poverty and deindustrialisation. This paper examines how Mahadev Govind Ranade (the school's founder) conceptualised progress by tracing its origins and evaluating how it was formulated to reconcile theory with India's political and socio-economic reality. Ranade identified specific Indian determinants of progress: the centrifugal nature of Indian politics; the dependence of a colonial economy; and its refutable role within the international division of labour theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial earnings inequalities in the United States diminished significantly over the three decades following World War II, but since then have not changed very much. Meanwhile, black—white disparities in employment have become increasingly pronounced. What accounts for this historical pattern? Sociologists often understand the evolution of racial wage and employment inequality as the consequence of economic restructuring, resulting in narratives about black economic fortunes that emphasize changing skill demands related to the rise and fall of the industrial economy. Reviewing a large body of work by economic historians and other researchers, this article contends that the historical evidence is not consistent with manufacturing- and skills-centered explanations of changes in relative black earnings and employment. Instead, data from the 1940s onward suggest that racial earnings inequalities have been significantly influenced by political and institutional factors—social movements, government policies, unionization efforts, and public-employment patterns—and that racial employment disparities have increased over the course of the postwar and post-1970s periods for reasons that are not reducible to skills. Taking a broader historical view suggests that black economic fortunes have long been powerfully shaped by nonmarket factors and recenters research on racial discrimination as well as the political and institutional forces that influence labor markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the closure of Pillowtex Mills (formerly Cannon Mills) in Kannapolis in July 2003, a mass layoff that was the largest in the state's history, with almost 5000 workers losing their jobs. The Pillowtex closure was part of the broader demise of the textile sector, which lost 700,000 jobs between 1994 and 2002, the bulk of them in the southern states. It was also part of the wider decline of manufacturing industries in the United States. To date, most studies of deindustrialization have concentrated on the 'Rust Belt' states in the Northeast and Midwest, but this study of the Pillowtex closure reveals that deindustrialization is a truly national phenomenon. Although the Kannapolis workers lived in a 'sunrise' region associated with economic growth, and although their plight attracted a great deal of attention from both the media and politicians, the effects of the closure were still devastating. The decline of the textile industry is, moreover, hurting workers and communities across the South but scholars have not yet studied it extensively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of automation on the working class in the U.S. It notes that the working class fears to be replaced by robots due to technological advances. It provides a background on the rapid automation of manufacturing in 1970s and how the Black workers were affected by the pressure of automation. It notes that the technological advances bring slow productivity growth instead of an increase in economic productivity.

Gabriel Winant's The Next Shift charts the transformation of Pittsburgh's labor market and political economy from the postwar period through the era of unabashed neoliberalism. During that time, relatively well-paid and unionized employment in steel and metalworking plummeted, while low-wage, precarious, nonunion employment in health care and related sectors surged. The composition of the working class also shifted, from being disproportionately white and male to disproportionately nonwhite and female. While Winant is a labor and social historian, his book has many implications for legal scholars, including those focused on the role of law in neoliberalism. In particular, the book situates both Pittsburgh's evolution and neoliberalism itself in the historical process of capitalist development, or the process through which imperatives of accumulation generate constant technological, economic, and social changes. In Pittsburgh, Winant shows, deindustrialization was an inflection point in that process, generating social crises that were mitigated first by the rise of health care, and then by the suppression of wages among health care workers. This Book Review argues that labor law--or the whole complex of laws constituting and governing work--was transformed by those same structural forces over that same period. Postwar labor law understood employment, at least for relatively privileged industrial workers, as a social relationship jointly constituted by the working class and employers. Under neoliberalism, labor law came to understand employment more as an individual contract between putative equals, a development which enabled profitability in low-productivity service sectors like nursing homes and home care. In that sense, labor law helped to birth today's working class, even as it denies that a working class still exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implications of climate change for economic development strategies in developing countries are explored, in particular whether industrialization still represents a viable development strategy in the context of climate change. Synthesizing the relevant literature and drawing insights from a comparison of Chinese and Indian experiences, it is argued that industrialization still represents an effective and, to some extent, indispensable development strategy, especially for those low- and low-middle- income countries that are affected by deindustrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using growth curve modeling techniques, this research investigates whether military spending improved or worsened the economic well-being of citizens within the American states during the post-Vietnam War period. We empirically test the military Keynesianism claim that military spending improves the economic conditions of citizens through its use by politicians as a countercyclical tool to reduce the negative effects of economic downturns. However, due to deindustrialization and the emergence of the "new military," there are reasons to believe that military spending will not effectively improve economic well-being during the post-Vietnam War era. Using longitudinal data we find that states with high levels of military spending are better equipped to stave off the deleterious effects of economic recession than are states with lower levels of military spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a socioeconomic change in America in the 1970s in relation to the issue of nursing home abuse and a patient abuse-related scandal involving the John J. Kane Hospital in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The economic aspects of U.S. health care policy are addressed, along with deindustrialization, long-term care for older Americans, and America's New Deal government policies. Social rights and hospital wages in the U.S. are assessed.

An accurate estimation of GDP for sub-state divisions is needed for studies on the overall size and growth of smaller economies, assessment of the industrial composition by subdivisions and the impact of economic policies, among other reasons. In this paper, I review two popular methods to infer GDP in counties, both of which rely heavily on payroll, without controlling for labor productivity differences between subdivisions. By considering labor productivity heterogeneity across counties, I propose a new methodology that appears to provide a better map of the GDP of counties. For forecasting, my approach uses payroll statistics, but to a lesser extent. The new method is tested with data from Puerto Rico, a suitable jurisdiction given its significant heterogeneity between counties. I am able to map changes in economic geography associated with changes in the state's economic structure. Like many other jurisdictions, Puerto Rico has undergone a deindustrialization process that ended up concentrating GDP in one geographical cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two and a half decades, the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, have become an integral part of the global economy. Following the change of regime, the rate of foreign direct investment increased, modern industries emerged and exports became significant. However, this process was halted by the global economic crisis in many advanced and transition economies, and the concept of 'reindustrialization' emerged as one of the economic policy responses to the new challenges generated by the crisis. In our paper, we study whether reindustrialization is present following the lowest point of the crisis in one of the post-socialist countries of the EU, in Hungary. If so, in which regions and industries, and under what conditions? Our research indicates that reindustrialization can be generally observed only in a few rural regions after 2009, limited to only one or two industries, while, for instance, in the capital and in its agglomerations and in urban regions with large research universities, deindustrialization is more likely to take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pamela Ann Davies argues that the closure of the Lynemouth, UK, aluminum smelter generated adverse social justice impacts and was caused by the adoption of green state policies. She employs that argument to critique green criminology for promoting adverse social justice impacts. Here, we reanalyze the Lynemouth plant closure. First, this reanalysis illustrates the various social and environmental forms of injustice the plant generated, especially its adverse human, nonhuman and ecological health consequences. Second, the closure is reassessed from a political economic perspective that places the plant closure within the context of global capitalist plant closures in the aluminum industry. That review notes that plant closures and deindustrialization in developed economies are now a common occurrence driven by economic concerns, not environmental policies. We point out that social injustice as well as ecological destruction are often created by the normal operation of capitalism, and that those consequences should not be overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assessed the opportunities and challenges faced by women involved in informal cross-border trade (ICBT) in Mutare during a prolonged economic crisis in Zimbabwe. Sixteen women informal cross-border traders were interviewed in depth while two cross-border bus drivers and two customs officials provided key information, which was categorized and discussed along emerging themes. The women were mainly middle-aged single parents who engaged in ICBT for survival. On average, they were educated but forced into ICBT by economic hardships and lack of jobs associated with the closure of industries that started in the late 1990s. Deindustrialization, however, created opportunity for the women to obtain Zimbabwean passports and import clothes, blankets, electrical gadgets and vehicle spare parts from South Africa (SA). Hence, a delay in obtaining the passport which costs US$51 and issued within six months was the women’s first challenge. Desperate to save meager incomes as most Zimbabweans resorted to ICBT, most of them slept in the open while in SA. Local authorities harassed them searching and confiscating undeclared goods. The women’s children suffered as they missed their mothers’ attention, control and love. Instead of helping the women’s businesses flourish, government proposed banning imports to revive Zimbabwe’s industrial sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

European pharmaceutical manufacturers are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with pharmaceutical players established outside Europe. As a result, Europe has witnessed the migration of jobs, R&D centres and production units to other parts of the world, leading to the gradual deindustrialization of the European pharmaceutical sector. This paper seeks to address this concern by showing that minor adjustments in the Intellectual Property rights regime in Europe may lead to a relevant impact on fostering innovation, high-tech employment and reindustrialization, thus contributing to the competitiveness of the European industrial pharmaceutical activity and to the European economic recovery. Two major pragmatic measures are discussed and evaluated: the manufacturing provision and the export provision. As illustrated below, over the next 9 years, the European ratification of the manufacturing provision and of the export provision could potentially represent a €3,339 million business volume (at ex-work prices); generate up to 8,890 new direct jobs and 35,560 new indirect jobs; and potentially generate the investment associated to the enhancement of manufacturing capacity equivalent to the creation of 37 new medium-sized pharmaceutical enterprises. It should be emphasized that for this study only 73% of the European market (manufacturing provision) and 11% of the non-European market (export provision) was considered for calculation purposes. Hence, these already impressive numbers are just a sample of the full potential of these Provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The new commercial globalization changed the map of the global industry. Today's world is different from yesterday. North does not dominate South in the same way. In the South there are large heterogeneities between developing countries, the emerging Asian and Latin American countries, etc. Some countries in the South have come to impose their own rules. However, not all emerging economies in the South have the same capacity prevail, as Latin America. Some Asian countries benefit temporarily from high growth, but experience a process of deindustrialization that weakens them. Some theories and analytical tools have become outdated or inaccurate, such as the center-periphery approach. Countries that yesterday belonged to the periphery have acquired characteristics of the old center and even exercise control over developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new commercial globalization changed the map of the global industry. Today's world is different from yesterday. North does not dominate South in the same way. In the South there are large heterogeneities between developing countries, the emerging Asian and Latin American countries, etc. Some countries in the South have come to impose their own rules. However, not all emerging economies in the South have the same capacity prevail, as Latin America. Some Asian countries benefit temporarily from high growth, but experience a process of deindustrialization that weakens them. Some theories and analytical tools have become outdated or inaccurate, such as the center-periphery approach. Countries that yesterday belonged to the periphery have acquired characteristics of the old center and even exercise control over developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, economic globalization has grown significantly in affluent democracies. "Faking this as a point of departure, we review social science research on the consequences of economic globalization for the state, the economy, and civil society. We advocate for a concrete position of empirical scrutiny, between the grand theorists and earlier empirical skeptics, and measure economic globalization as the heightening of international trade and investment. Social scientists have engaged in lively debates surrounding such topics as how globalization affects the welfare state, politics, deindustrialization, inequality, and organized labor. Among the themes that emerge from these debates are the distinct values of within- and between country comparisons and the need for a stronger connection between theoretical accounts of globalization and empirical analyses. At the same time, many aspects of social life have been neglected by recent research on globalization. Throughout, we gauge current consensus and dissensus, identify understudied topics, and suggest directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

O ver two decades ago, the term “restructuring” became a popular label for describing the tumultuous political-economic and spatial transformations that were unfolding across the global urban system. As Edward Soja (1987: 178; italics in original) indicated in a classic formulation: Restructuring is meant to convey a break in secular trends and a shift towards a significantly different order and configuration of social, economic and political life. It thus evokes a sequence of breaking down and building up again, deconstruction and attempted reconstitution , arising from certain incapacities or weaknesses in the established order which preclude conventional adaptations and demand significant structural change instead [...] Restructuring implies flux and transition, offensive and defensive postures, a complex mix of continuity and change. In the 1980s and early 1990s, scholars mobilized a variety of categories—including, among others, deindustrialization, reindustrialization, post-Fordism, internationalization, global city formation, urban entrepreneurialism, informalization, gentrification and sociospatial polarization—in order to describe and theorize the ongoing deconstruction and attempted reconstitution of urban social space. These concepts provided key intellectual tools through which a generation of urbanists could elaborate detailed empirical studies of ongoing urban transformations both in North America and beyond. In the early 2000s, such concepts remain central to urban political economy, but they are now being complemented by references to “neoliberalism,” which is increasingly seen as an essential descriptor of the contemporary urban condition. This widening and deepening interest in the problematic of neoliberalism among urban scholars is evident in the papers presented in this special issue of CITY : all deploy variations on this terminology—“neoliberalism,” “neoliberal,” “neoliberalized,” “neoliberalization,” and so forth—in order to interpret major aspects of contemporary urban restructuring in North American cities. At the same time, like earlier analysts of urban restructuring, the contributors to this special issue reject linear models of urban transition, emphasizing instead its uneven, contentious, volatile and uncertain character. Indeed, each of the contributions included here suggestively illustrates Soja’s conception of restructuring: whether implicitly or explicitly, each postulates a systemic breakdown of established forms of urban life (generally associated with postwar, Fordist-Keynesian capitalism) and the subsequent proliferation of social, political, discursive, and representational struggles to create a transformed, “neoliberalized” urban order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new commercial globalization changed the map of the global industry. Today's world is different from yesterday. North does not dominate South in the same way. In the South there are large heterogeneities between developing countries, the emerging Asian and Latin American countries, etc. Some countries in the South have come to impose their own rules. However, not all emerging economies in the South have the same capacity prevail, as Latin America. Some Asian countries benefit temporarily from high growth, but experience a process of deindustrialization that weakens them. Some theories and analytical tools have become outdated or inaccurate, such as the center-periphery approach. Countries that yesterday belonged to the periphery have acquired characteristics of the old center and even exercise control over developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new commercial globalization changed the map of the global industry. Today's world is different from yesterday. North does not dominate South in the same way. In the South there are large heterogeneities between developing countries, the emerging Asian and Latin American countries, etc. Some countries in the South have come to impose their own rules. However, not all emerging economies in the South have the same capacity prevail, as Latin America. Some Asian countries benefit temporarily from high growth, but experience a process of deindustrialization that weakens them. Some theories and analytical tools have become outdated or inaccurate, such as the center-periphery approach. Countries that yesterday belonged to the periphery have acquired characteristics of the old center and even exercise control over developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite robust, and much touted, growth, Kazakhstan's economic system enjoys only tepid support among large swathes of the population and is viewed by many as neither fair nor legitimate. Extreme juxtapositions of new wealth and new poverty against a historic background of economic and social egalitarianism combine to make this a potent and combustible issue. Women, ethnic Slavs, the poor, people in urban areas most afflicted by post-Soviet de-industrialisation, those who feel they have lost out in the transition to a market economy, and those who are pessimistic about their financial prospects are more likely to question the legitimacy of the current economic system. Because scepticism about the distributive system contributes to political and social strife, these findings provide grounds for concern about Kazakhstan's long-term stability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper quantifies the consumption and production of cotton textiles at different stages of processing in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial era (1820–1941). It discusses the main factors that impeded the development of an internationally competitive cotton textile industry, and concludes that production in the industry increased significantly in Java during 1820–71, and again during 1874–1914 and 1934–41. However, most activity involved finishing of imported cotton cloth to suit local preferences. Spinning and weaving increased only marginally, as domestic production was precluded by the high-labour intensity of small-scale production, marginal local raw cotton production, and competitive international markets for yarn and cloth. Unfavourable and fluctuating real exchange rates discouraged investment in modern spinning and weaving ventures until trade protection and technological change in small-scale weaving caused rapid growth of domestic production after 1934. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]